Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to an image bearer protective agent, a protective layer forming device, an image forming method, an image forming apparatus, and a process cartridge.
Description of the Related Art
In electrophotography, an electrostatic latent image is formed on an image bearer, and the electrostatic latent image is developed with charged toner to become a visible image. The visible image is transferred onto a recording medium.
After the visible image has been transferred from the image bearer onto a recording medium (this process may be hereinafter referred to as “transfer process”), some toner particles may remain on the image bearer without being transferred. When a new electrostatic latent image is formed on the image bearer with such residual toner particles remaining thereon, the image bearer is prevented from being uniformly charged. Therefore, residual toner particles are generally removed from the image bearer in a process called cleaning process after the transfer process. In attempting to prevent toner particles from remaining on the image bearer after the transfer process, applying an image bearer protective agent which contains a fatty acid metal salt and an inorganic lubricant (e.g., boron nitride) to the surface of the image bearer has been proposed.